I agree with the other posters' advice on this thread, but I would like to add a few more points to what has already been said. Firstly, you need to be absolutely certain you and (hopefully) your advisers know how precarious the job market in academia is, especially in German. Being a graduate from a top liberal arts college, students from that particular background can have rather unrealistic expectations regarding graduate school. Liberal arts college students are taught by wonderful professors who have mentored and nurtured them intellectually, and whose students come to believe that this type of job will be available to them one day if they continue to excel at current rates. Graduate school will not be about rock star students who have the initiative to succeed academically among a sea of peers in their given major(s). It will be much more cutthroat than that (as past comments have highlighted), and not to mention graduate school will be much more rigid and structured when it comes to your own intellectual output. What you write as a graduate student will more likely match formally edited, peer-reviewed journals, not the radical pet projects you completed as a junior or senior.
Graduate school in any field is first and foremost professional training for a particular job, and that job currently for German is training for academic positions at colleges or universities. The problem is, the job market for TT jobs no longer exists, and obtaining a PhD to do anything else is an inefficient way to gain applicable skills to other jobs (you can do that through other, less time consuming training). That is why you must be whole-heartedly committed to pursuing this line of work even if there is a high probability you won't get a TT job. It might help to do some reading up on the adjunct crisis on blogs, websites (from the Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed to the NYT), etc in order to test how intent you are, and whether this line of work is right for you before spending a decade in graduate school.
In addition, as others have mentioned, if teaching college students or being one of the VERY select few that obtain jobs at PhD-granting institutions AS A TT PROFESSOR, you then need to do your research on what programs do well with placing graduates into TT jobs, as there is a lot of variance. Below is a link to a terrific blog, written by a German PhD, who has chronicled the ills of the German job market after the 2008 recession.
http://zugunglueck.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-job-market-in-german-really-works.html
As you can see, and as "Adjunct Nate Silber" demonstrates, programs at some rather elite institutions fare miserably with their job placement of students. On the other hand, some larger programs at public institutions do extraordinarily well with job training. Keep this in mind as you thoroughly research graduate programs. However, a program's excellent record with TT job placements does not translate into a terrific program fit (more on that later) for you or your particular interests necessarily. Also keep in mind that programs that overwhelmingly place their students in coveted R1 jobs (Berkeley, Princeton, etc) don't do necessarily well with placing students in teaching-heavy jobs, like the ones at SLACs (small liberal arts colleges). Those are factors you must weigh when thinking about what you want the IDEAL outcome of your PhD work to be.
Lastly (before I list some final points to consider), if this is something you end up doing (applying to PhD programs), and in turn have considerable luck with being in the envious position of getting multiple offers to choose from, do not take the issue of funding lightly. Many programs (if they have the money) will shower you with "funding packages" that might include fellowships (usually for the first year to "sweeten" the deal, but are crucial to finishing a degree in a more timely manner), summer funding (though rarely offered up front, summer funding options should ideally be available beyond teaching remedial language courses) and assistantships (the usual form graduate funding takes). Do not take any of these "funding" offers seriously until you research the cost of living, average time to a degree in that program, and the workload required for assistantships. You can be easily screwed if you don't look into these things. Many of these stipend amounts were set decades ago, and do not reflect the current cost of living in cities where housing cannot keep up with the population growth. Same goes for teaching load: if any program expects you to teach more than one course section per semester, look elsewhere. The point of TAing is to gain professional and teaching experience while finding a way to make enough to live off of while still having enough time for coursework/writing. At no time should you be (overly) exploited, and prevented from making considerable progress toward your degree. At the most your contract should only require you to work 20 hours per week, as that is what a 50% appointment plainly is.
Most programs will allow you visit at their expenses. DO NOT MAKE A DECISION IN FAVOR OF OR AGAINST A PROGRAM WITHOUT VISITING! Here are the other factors I would consider after being accepted and having visited:
1. What are the other grad students like? This is incredibly important as you spend a lot of time together.
2. As mentioned before, how much will you have to teach, versus how much will your stipend be? It should not be more than one course section per semester.
3. IMPORTANT: Are the course offerings appealing? Do they match the approach you wish to take as a graduate student? Do they seem more interdisciplinary? More theoretical? Boring?
4. Look very carefully at the requirements for the degree levels. Do they seem comparable to other programs you are visiting/have visited? Do they seem rigid or old fashioned? You wouldn't believe how degree requirements vary among seemingly similar programs. Ask grad students about the exam expectations, also. Are they manageable, or impossibly difficult and arbitrary?
5. With whom on the faculty could you work, based on your interests and theirs and from word of mouth? Be sure to look at that professor(s) record for advising, both officially from departmental statistics and from grad students. Be sure you you have more than one viable option for advising in the event a professor gets a job elsewhere or retires.
6. Due to funding cuts, this is becoming less common, but do these programs have visiting professors from German-speaking universities? That speaks for the dynamism (or lack thereof) of certain departments.
7. Does the program allow you to take courses in other departments? There will be required outside coursework, but this speaks for the flexibility of a given department if you want to take relevant coursework in other areas.
8. Along the line of visiting scholars from German-speaking universities, does the program have international exchange options for grad students with departments abroad? This is also being phased out in many places due to low participation numbers, but this is important for language area studies.
9. Will you be able to develop professionally, academically, and intellectually for the kind of work you are interested in one day (hopefully) doing? If you want to teach undergraduates at a liberal arts college, you should ask about being able to teach upper-level courses or the possibility of designing your own course for that purpose.
In the end, so many factors will be going into making an informed decision, all of which can't be listed here. The best advice to give is to gather up the important factors, most of which are mentioned by myself and others on this thread, and consider personal factors also (you need to above all be happy where you end up, so keep location and institution in mind), in order to make the most lucrative decision over something that in the long run might not pay off in the way one might hope.